Board/Minutes/2020-10-S2S/Improving member and volunteer recruiting

e.g via communications working group

Notes by participants. Might be enriched.

This session took place in parallel with "Articles of Association". A summary was provided to the other group.

Participants

Board members

• Joost Schouppe (Secretary)
• Mikel Maron
• Paul Norman

The rest of the board members participated in the parallel session "Articles of Association".

Biographies.

Notes

Members OSMF

• context needed:
  • which countries are low compared to number of active contributor mappers potentially
  • what are the demographics of members? Eg gender >
    • probably legally not possible because of data handling;
    • survey of the membership? One-off or connected to sign-up / renewal. E.g. compare to survey of mappers; demographics; track over time
• banner on OSM.org?
• not necessarily an issue: membership is growing a lot recently
• personal outreach project?

Volunteers OSMF

• clear ask about what working groups could ideally do, and create a "to do list" about what new volunteers could do
  • this is quite a lot of work; needs to be done with Board+working group
  • Operations Working Group (OWG) revamp seems to have worked > tell a "story" about how this happened and is taking steps in the right direction.
    • Usually people showing up to meetings to help on specific projects
    • Biweekly meetings
  • State of the Map organising committee (SotM WG)

semi-open meetings; people join for smaller things and occasionally stay on

• lower barrier to "entry": have a task list of specifics where you don't need to be an actual member
• have Working Groups (WGs) communicate both (both what?) officially on their WG page ways to volunteer

• Volunteer drive?
  • content.
  • show content.
  • interact.
  • idea: adopt-a-volunteer; challenge board members to find and "train" two volunteers.
  • "donate time" project: volunteers who work for companies that depend on OSM might convince their employers to step in
  • idea: do regular OSMF-wide onboarding meeting.

Decisions

Members

• See if we can collect optional anonymous data about members from members. Discuss with Membership Working Group (MWG) & Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee (DISCo).
• Further action on Member recruitment depends on insights. Focus on underrepresented groups.

Volunteers

• Write a narrative piece on OWG revamp.
• Extend "donate time" project to companies.

Action items

• Joost to develop numbers on country breakdown in current membership, vs prior year and vs country level participation.
• Mikel to
  • write draft about Operations Working Group and work with Paul.
  • Extend "donate time" project to companies.